Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday October 04, 2012 @07:25PM
from the by-my-axe! dept.

Dr. Gamera writes "Maine state senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz plays World of Warcraft. The opposing party in Maine has issued a press release attacking her for her Level 85 Orc Assassination Rogue. From the article: 'In an unusual press release issued Thursday, the Maine GOP attacked Lachowicz for a “bizarre double life” in which she’s a devotee of the hugely popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft. In the game, she’s “Santiaga,” an "orc assassination rogue" with green skin, fangs, a Mohawk and pointy ears.' Her incumbent, much to his credit, rejects the attack as 'mudslinging politics.'"

It doesn't matter whether you vote for the Horde or the Alliance. It's not a real choice because ultimately both of them are owned by the moneyed interests of the guild banks and the vendors, and will do anything for a few gold pieces and some high-level items. Until we break free of this two-faction system there will never be any change in Azeroth.

I would suggest voting Libertarian, but Azeroth is already a Libertarian paradise: no taxes, neither the Alliance nor the Horde maintain a police force, fire department, or public library system; there's minimal public investment in infrastructure like roads (in fact virtually no government to speak of), government does nothing as demons and undead stalk the land (I don't know what the official Libertarian position on a plague of the undead is, but I assume Ron Paul would argue that this should be left up to the private sector). Plus, everyone's on the gold standard!

Yes, Libertarianism is an excellent way to run an imaginary world. The real world requires compromise with reality. Like the people forming governments to protect themselves from each other. Especially from bands of marauding warlords.

That sounds just like the Republican totalitarians who will strip your property and kill you without trial if you don't play by their rules, who created and run front "libertarian" groups like the Tea Party.

Tea Party is a bloc of social conservatives who want to make government just small enough to fit in one's bedroom - and then fit it there indeed. It's just as much antithetic to any sane libertarian as government control of economics. In fact, those who are rational about it should realize that e.g. criminalization of homosexuality would be far more damaging to human rights than higher taxes.

On the other hand, those libertarians who think that they can buy lower taxes by giving up rights of other people are

Via quests, I was paid by the leaders or governing bodies to instill discipline workers, to catch thieves, kill murders, and quite frequently to steal supplies, even from commoners on my own side. Considering every adventurer wandering through the town gets offered that too, that sounds like a police force and tax system. They even have this socialist welfare system where they basically pay to walk five feet and talk to someone else. Doesn't sound very Libertarian to me, just a lot less bureaucracy and o

No taxes? Last time I visited Azeroth (admittedly, a few years ago), they imposed a levy on every transaction via the (government-owned and monopolized) auction house, and because my work (raiding) provided benefits, the government effectively forced me to share my hard-earned wealth with the lower and middle-classes of Azeroth. They didn't call it "taxes" in that case, however. Instead, they called it things like mandatory "repair bills" and "reagent costs" that were the result of them working in collusion with private sector members who got kickbacks like prime real estate in capital cities. And that's hardly the least of their sins.

Rather than leaving the private sector alone to manage itself, as they should, they went on that "Burning Crusade" reform campaign while I was visiting, during which they imposed stricter limits on the number of people allowed to work on a job at any given time. That, in turn, forced my company to eliminate 15 paid positions on their raid team, leaving me destitute and begging for scraps.

And no police? As if! Not only do they have police (who they refer to as "guards", for some strange reason), but the police habitually discriminate against foreigners, even going so far as to physically assault them for doing nothing more than being in the vicinity of a city. I can't tell you how many times I invited friends to visit me, only to have the guards insist that my friend was most unwelcome.

The public transportation system is a hodge-podge as well. The privatized zeppelin transportation seemed to be doing fine, but the publicly-funded tram system was regularly plagued by...odd problems [bitnexus.net].

Azeroth is actually communist, as all workers have free access to the means of production (anvils, forges), as well as natural resources (fishing pools, herbs). If Azeroth were libertarian, you'd have to pay a private owner for access to his copper nodes.

Funny. And, living on a PvP server, I am pretty sure that the results are very similar to what you would get in a libertarian world: don't venture outside unless you have a max-level PvP-geared killer on call (whether via an Alt or a guildie), gathering materials frequently involves killing off the competition, and then guarding the spawn points with your friends, your own city gets raided for shits and giggles, at which point everyone who isn't a max-level character can just log off or hide somewhere in the lesser-traveled regions, etc.Then again, being fully-geared, fully-leveled is kinda fun when you run into some lower levels. Unless, of course, they call in their guild, and proceed to corpse camp you.

Also, you can see where the government is involved when you and thousands of others are tasked with bringing materials to repair a bridge and yet here, years later the bridge still isn't repaired. Stupid government scam to extract as much money and value while providing only enough service to not cause riots is a bad way to do business.

Her comeback to this should be, "I KNOW the difference between fantasy and reality. Apparently, my opponent does not."

No, it should not be, that would be as dumb and misinformed as the party's statement:

"Martin said he was unaware of the state Republican Party’s press release or Lachowicz’s hobby until contacted by POLITICO. He said he’s met his opponent once so far and she “seemed like a nice lady.” He said he deplores “mudslinging politics.”... “Somebody’s personal life is their personal life. What you do in society and in the community is what matters."

no, i understand just fine. he gets to look like a white knight to the privacy people, while slurring his opponent to the christ-bothering meddlers at the same time through the side-channel. makes perfect sense.

He said he’s met his opponent once so far and she “seemed like a nice lady.”

He should disavow his ad in more clear terms than just not taking credit for it.

Also another reason SuperPACs are the bane of our society - they keep all the connections neatly hidden so proper attribution/consequences for atrocious attack ads or or paid puff-pieces can never be worked out and corporate owners can basically buy elections for their favored rubber-stamper.

The attack assumes the fact that the game is a fantasy world. The substance of the attack is that she spends too much time in the fantasy world.

If she says anything it should be to laugh along with it (haha, maybe I do spend a bit too much time with that game, we all have our foibles), or at most say something along the lines of "it's a private matter that has not and will not affect my job performance."

I know a few people who are addicted to that game, play it at work and too much at home. Never played it myself.. How many hours does it take to become a level 85 orc assassin rogue?
The other question is, how many hours a day playing RPG games is is too many for a busy politician who I'll presume has a family...

What I do is open the message that I want to mod in a new window and mod it there. That way I know that I am modding the message that I want to mod, and that I will not accidentally change the mod with the mouse wheel. I can also see if anyone else has modded the message since I first loaded the page.

Why just 18-30? I'm 40 and grew up in the 80's --- pretty much when home gaming started. I don't have the time to play like I used to, but I still play once in a while, and have been involved in a few MMORPG's (EVE Online, WoW, LotRO). I tend to play more games with a pause button, or family oriented games now, but I understand the line between gaming and real life. Not that I'm running for office, but I have no problem with the fact that someone that is plays games. There are plenty of people who work

I'm in the fortunate position of not having to work for someone else. However if my employer thinks I just disappear at 5pm and magically re-appear at 9am, and during this down-time I spend all night thinking of better ways to do my job, well, s/he can go fuck her/himself. There's nothing wrong with having hobbies.

And listing WOW as a hobby would be fine (there are positive and negative associations so you proabbly want to consider the audience), but that wasn't the claim. The claim was listing it as a "SKILL".

Playing WOW isn't that much of a skill. But being, say, a raid leader in WOW requires quite a few marketable skills:* Flattery.* Begging while retaining a measure of pride.* Wrangling schedules.* Recruitment.* Research.* Maths (sometimes).* Dealing with interpersonal conflicts.* Telling someone they suck but crafting it in a way that they come out of it thinking it was a positive experience and a desire to improve.* Dealing with the stress as you sit late at night thinking of the raid the next day, wonderin

I can't imagine hiring someone dumb enough to list WOW on a resume. (Hint: employers want to hire people who want to WORK.)

Coming from the perspective of an officer of a large guild and raid leader, I can. This is going to come across as a personal anecdote, but what the heck.

Let's take your average raid team. This is a group of folks playing different classes, different specs, having different roles, playing the game their own way. I have to bring them all together and co-ordinate their efforts in order to defeat the raid encounters. For all of us, that's some serious teamwork right there. For me, it's a test of my own le

Gaming still isn't mainstream outside of the "sub 35" group in turn this makes them into a loner, even within geek circles(and don't deny it) MMO's still hold that, same with MP games that old stereotype still holds sway with some people. It'll take another few decades before that opinion changes, though it's ugly politics at it's finest and the GOP candidate should be called on it.

It doesn't really matter that it was "technically" the party's SuperPAC that did it; they did it on his behalf and he should be held responsible. Maybe the party would learn to back off a little (although overturning Citizens United is required to fix the problem completely).

Romney's lies mostly fly through the mass media without challenge. Recently they have met some resistance, since the corporate owners know Obama's going to win, so are going along to get along with the power for 4 more years.

The mass media is populated by journalism majors, they don't have the capacity to truly do good fact checking.

1. There aren't many journalism majors in the mass media, since there aren't many journalism majors, and there are even fewer jobs in the shrinking industry.2. Journalism majors

I'm not voting either side because of the ad. What I am going to do is write a letter and mail it to the address on the site (since I expect the email inboxes will be full and they're not terribly computer-savvy anyway) and explain to them just how out-of-touch this makes them--and every other Republican to many people--look to a younger generation. Maybe I'll even get a response. It would be amusing.

Where did he take responsibility? He blamed his own party for mudslinging, not himself. As if he's not working closely with his own state Republican Party, that's funding and staffing the rest of his campaign.

I fully agree with this statement. I am 41 myself, and my peers/friends in the same age range (+10 yrs) all grew up playing video games from the dawn of their creation; Pong, Atari 2600, Vic20s, Ti99s, etc.., and continue to do so today.

Nevertheless when you read some of her posts it does look like she has a serious maturity issue. Anyone who resorts to calling the opposing party "teabaggers" probably isnt going to be non-partisan, and probably isnt senate material.

I mean, not a huge fan of this kind of politics, but her maturity and partisanship certainly are relevant.

...But the sword was considered to be too powerful for anyone to possess, so it was removed from the game and stored on a one gig flash drive. But it was foretold that one day players who could wield the sword might reveal themselves...

My question is, how the hell can we trust her to work hard for the citizens of Maine when she can't even find the time to pug a few heroic dungeons? Her gear is terrible! Does she even know where the justice point vendor is?

Seriously though, it looks like she played heavily up until a few years ago. I guess she's spent more time lately on real-life issues. Like running for Senate.

As a professing Christian myself, I'm gonna say you're running close to a no-true-scotsman fallacy on this one. Sadly it is possible for people to be Christian and to still use the Bible to push some bizarre agenda over issues God really isn't concerned with. If Islam has to claim the fanatics who detonate themselves because of false teachings from corrupt imams, then Christianity has to take responsibility for the Paul Hills and Jerry Jones of the world.
Bottom line: we aren't perfect. Anyone who claims to be is lying. We're just sick people telling other sick people where we found a doctor.

I'm going to assume that you are making assumptions based on other fantasy novels and games, but in the World of Warcraft, orcs are not inherently evil.

I was an avid Warcraft II player, and in that world orcs were definitely portrayed as the evil team. Most of the magic spells were centered around death and "human" sacrifice, distinct taboo subjects. The artistry, backstory in the manual (yeah, paper manual with flavor text!), and voice acting were all distinctly savage and violent. This "not inherentl

Farmville actually qualifies you to be a lobbyist. You get to learn how to nag people until they give up and comply or bribe the system if you don't get what you want fast enough, all while doing absolutely nothing good for society.

Her incumbent, much to his credit, rejects the attack as 'mudslinging politics.'"

Credit my ass.

Is there still anyone in America who doesn't realize that when the party apparatus slings mud and the candidate then "distances" himself from the remarks that it's all bullshit?

It's like the fiction of SuperPACs and campaigns not coordinating their efforts.

It's like those fuckers are laughing at us.

I have to say that I'm impressed with the American people's willingness to overlook this kind of stuff and suffer silently. If it were up to me, there would be pikes around capital buildings with the heads of politicians who lied on them. Of course, we'd have to ramp up pike manufacturing, but that's heavy industry and would be good for the economy.

Tell me most Americans wouldn't feel better to see some politicians' heads on pikes. It improves my consumer confidence just thinking about it.

In Holland, we have had politicians who were publicly known to visit SM dungeons and black rooms. Are publicly gay. Or just unmarried, like our current prime minister. And no-one, literally no-one, makes a fuzz out of that.

Any debate will be about political issues. The worst accusations regarding personal lifes is about possible activist behaviour in the past. Working for greenpeace for example, like the current leader of the big labour party who has been arrested at least 10 times due to his activist history.

So.. I think this is a good thing. I'm not seeing how a politicians personal life, sexlife, hobbies, children, wife or man, has anything to do with the quality of the person as politician, and the message he or she brings. They are ordinary humans just like you and me with human desires, emotions and errors.

So, why with 'you' it is an issue if a politician plays a rogue in WoW? I wouldn't know, and have no issue with it myself untill she ganks me. If any, it only proves she's just as human as the 2 million other rogues around in this game, and is in for some fun and entertainment at a time, proving she's got a modern youthful mind..